TRPG General Chat

The Vernal Equinox!

Sky Fireball is just sleeping

@Ben i'm guessing there is a season for it then?

@kviiri I do have a Vitamin D deficiency, so that's my only issue with that

Just did a quick Google, and I think the fact that they are a registered pest species, that overrides there stauts as a protected species.

Once numbers get back under control, that willprobably change back again

@kviiri Happy Naw-Ruz!

ah

it is pretty strange for a species to be registered as both those things

1:05 PM

@BESW Likewise!

1:15 PM

@trogdor Canada goose. Despite being protected for a while was still undeniable a jerk.

There's discussion in some places about increasing deer hunting in order to save them from death by ticks.

Article; warning for gruesome deer death.

Chronic Wasting Disease is another heavy-hitter for deer.

if only there were some sort of natural predator that could help cull the herd.
<wolfy eye roll>

@BESW Deer control is an issue here. The method by which the population is controlled is rather divisive. Very few think that importing a pack or two of wolves is a good plan.... which is sad.

People scared of wolves, therefore no wolves allowed

:(

@trogdor some people also believe the earth is flat and that vaccines are bad, but we just call them "idiots" where I'm from.

1:22 PM

It's healthy to have a fear of apex predators. I'm just saying it really should have been given more consideration along side hiring dudes with guns to stalk around parks.

Lol

@goodguy5 That sounds like a nice place to be.

@ColinGross wolves are good for the environments they have been artificially removed from by humans

Sure, but there are differing degrees of apex predators as they relate to threats posed to man.

Wolves have always been good. Then you have things like bobcats, which are jerks.

My point is the only reason we have for that happening is,.. people are a little more scared if them than they should be

I'm not saying you should try to pet them

XD

1:24 PM

@goodguy5 All cats species are jerks... lovable... furry... why can't I stop myself from saying inane things around them... jerks.

^

@trogdor That would mean your amygdala isn't working.

or is maybe installed backwards.

aladgyma?

@ColinGross lol, yeah again, don't per wolves, it hang out with bears

None of that is smart

@goodguy5 It's the ~~hardware~~ wetware responsible for your fear response.

1:28 PM

@ColinGross you said installed backwards, so I backwardsded it

@trogdor I mean, on the list of apex predators that one would consider petting, wolves are probably the "safest", relatively.... or maybe coyotes...

missed that. I must need coffee

Eh, what happened is that we stopped making choices that gave the wolves space to wolf without us.

A wolf is a lot more scary when you haven't designed your infrastructure, culture, and philosophy with them in mind.

@BESW Is this a fewer humans proposal or a vote for giant archologies surrounded by massive nature preserves?

Because I could get on board with both of those.

I don't know what the change would look like now, because Shirely we can't just go back to, say, the pre-Contact Indigenous floor plan. But talking to the Indigenous folx would probably be a good place to start planning such a change.

@goodguy5 but does that mean you should do it? No XD

1:33 PM

@BESW "Some white people, like me, are going to show up soon. Do NOT give them cranberries. let them die of scurvy. also learn how guns work"

@BESW Yeah... also have to balance desire to go populate space. I really like the very hippy outlook, but at the same time, definitely need spaceships.

Harmony with nature is great until space rock disrupts nature.

@goodguy5 No, like... talk to them now. They have perspectives and insights we need, and also the right to have a strong voice in what happens to their land.

Probably should classify asteroids as a pest species and let the gun advocates hunt them.

(And not just in terms of ecology.)

@BESW So you are remiss that we can't as the pre-contact indigenous people what they would have wanted, but at least we can ask their descendants. Sorry; your original statement just confused me. Am I understanding?

1:36 PM

@ColinGross I'm confident we can find creative ways to combine the two. Living in harmony doesn't mean rejecting progress--just redefining progress and its priorities.

@BESW Priority 1: wolves. Priority 2: space wolves!

@ColinGross I mean.... Space can be seen as part of nature

@DavidCoffron I mean, obviously it would have been nice to not steal their land and do all those awful things, but I'm saying we can't revert to the way it was so we need to put them at the spearhead of determining what we should do.

Treat 'em like the sovereign nations they are, inherently possessing the dignity of self-determination not granted like a boon by an occupying force.

2

And that, in turn, would bring Indigenous systems of knowing to the forefront of ecological planning. Those systems are better equipped to handle it than our chopped-up-into-chunks version of the sciences where each discipline is constantly shocked when other disciplines have something useful to offer their specialty.

all of the things I can think to say are snarky or just mean spirited, so I'll wait until we resume D&D talk

@BESW Always the issue with learning... trade off between breadth and depth.

1:45 PM

mm. I'm well aware that current attitudes would make this approach... impractical to implement on a large scale.

@BESW that reminds me... Priority 3: large wolves!... dire even.

Actually, I think dire wolves were an actual thing now extinct.

But where it's implemented at the local scales where it can be effected quickly and practically, it has noticeable positive effects.

Dire wolf

The dire wolf (Canis dirus, "fearsome dog") is an extinct species of the genus Canis. It is one of the most famous prehistoric carnivores in North America, along with its extinct competitor, the sabre-toothed cat Smilodon fatalis. The dire wolf lived in the Americas during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene epochs (125,000–9,440 years ago). The species was named in 1858, four years after the first specimen had been found. Two subspecies are recognized: Canis dirus guildayi and Canis dirus dirus. The dire wolf probably evolved from Armbruster's wolf (Canis armbrusteri) in North America. The...

Forgot about smilodon. Is that a 5e creature? It had to be ported. If not, definitely doing a 2e port. Need more smilodons in games.

@BESW Wholly agree. Try to get past the awful colonial or imperial actions of the past, and let them choose the path forward

@DavidCoffron Would you say you'd have to find that path?

And the people that do that would be...

1:49 PM

@ColinGross Pathfinders...?

que the eyerolls!

Oh. Cuz the rpg

"Dire" is used to describe several different IRL species, and D&D grabbed it as a generalized "like a normal thing but scarier" adjective.

@BESW dire wombats!

I really hope that's a thing.

@BESW As a weird adjective, it really confused me as a non-native speaker for a while

1:50 PM

Diprotodon

Diprotodon, meaning "two forward teeth", is the largest known marsupial to have ever lived. Along with many other members of a group of species collectively known as the "Australian megafauna", it existed from approximately 1.6 million years ago until extinction some 46,000 years ago (through most of the Pleistocene epoch). Diprotodon species fossils have been found in sites across mainland Australia, including complete skulls and skeletons, as well as hair and foot impressions. Female skeletons have been found with babies located where the mother's pouch would have been. The largest specimens...

Megafauna is such a nice term. Way better than the other terms that lost that election, like "hellafauna" or "whoafauna"

Ultrafauna

in The Reading Room, Nov 6 '17 at 2:29, by BESW

@Ash (and anyone else who might know) Do you know of any book/film/etc about an alternate history in which Australia's megafauna are domesticated by its indigenous peoples?

Supafauna

@BESW Sounds like a question for sff.se

Recommendation questions are off-topic last I checked.

1:54 PM

They do story/novel identification questions

Oh, right

(Which was... years ago... sff and I did not play well together.)

Oh right lol

Well, yeah I've seen a fair few questions like that. Not, recommendations, more identification questions.

There were some responses in the chat, but apparently most of the people who have written that kind of book were... not very interested in accurate or respectful depictions of the Indigenous peoples.

@BESW If you want respect for people, don't go looking to humans. They're bad at that. Definitely go with dogs.

(And just seemed kinda... bland and dull.)

1:57 PM

talking about weird animals made me think of monotremes.

What if people laid eggs and seeped milk from their skin?

@ColinGross Fair enough, though there are some notable exceptions and focusing on ownvoices sff has really opened some amazing doors for me.

@goodguy5 Maternity fashion would be very different.

@ColinGross Lock your partner and your dog in the boot of your car, and come back in an hour. Then see who's happy to see you.

I can't wait for Rebecca Roanhorse's next book. [bounces]

@BESW I'm guessing that there'd just be some sort of band over your stomach that would collect the milk into a basin?

@goodguy5 Good Morning!

Lol

2:00 PM

morning!

@goodguy5 I was not paying attention to that part of the conversation O_O

@goodguy5 Haha It just ticked over for me.

And on that note, I should turn in. Adult responsibilities suck sometimes :P

Oh my, it IS midnight.

I've been so happy I totally lost track of the time.

@BESW It's always midnight somewhere.

I think that only works by a naturalistic definition of the term.

it is always mid night (space intentional) somewhere

2:14 PM

@BESW Is there any non-subjective meaning for the word midnight?

I can't think of any objective way to define hours on the globe.

@DavidCoffron If midnight is twelve o'clock am, then it's only ever midnight somewhere in the world on the hour (and occasionally half-hour).

vicky_molokh

Oh, it's objective all right, just dependent on location. ^_^

@BESW Oh. I see what you mean

If midnight is the middle of the night, then it glides smoothly across the globe at all times rather than jerking around based on man-made sectioning.

@BESW I mean, I prefer our sectioning to 86,400 time zones a second apart tbh

2:16 PM

@DavidCoffron This is the one true way. Also, code indents less than 50 spaces is cowardice. /S

Sir Cinnamon

@ColinGross Spaces HISSSS

\t\t\t

One kind of whitespace vs many whitespace characters. I wonder if I could troll the next developers meeting with that as some kind of diversity, equity, and inclusion topic.

@ColinGross AllSpacesMatter

I know there's at least one other person in there that writes LaTeX and can help me bring that around to typesetting pun... "yes yes, the kernel is important, but so is the kerning!"

@DavidCoffron Which ones are safe spaces?

Well, there's a change that I'm surprised I hadn't noticed.

The editions prior to 5 used fully justified columns. 5e typesetting is ragged right.

Was the text in the 4th edition books ragged right?

Sir Cinnamon

2:53 PM

@ColinGross shopontheborderlands.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/…

looks like yes

So it was ragged right. I guess 3.5 was the last fully justified edition.

Xirema

3:17 PM

@ColinGross Please excuse me while I crop and frame this and use it to defame you. ;)

CTWind

Is it inappropriate to downvote a question that says "I have a question about rule X, I don't have the book these rules are in"? I'd think that'd fall under insufficient research effort.

I don't think you'd have to. The context is probably sufficiently obscure that most readers would skip over the nonsense about ragged right and just misinterpret the fully justified bit.

Q: Do you waste sorcery points if you try to apply metamagic to a spell from a scroll but fail to cast it?

5

To cast a spell from a scroll that is on your list but of a higher level you can cast, you need to make a spellcasting ability check (wasting the spell scroll on a failure). What happens if a low level sorcerer tries to apply metamagic to a high level spell he attempts to cast from a spell scrol...

@CTWind Seems like it would be difficult to use rules from a book you can't read.

I feel like it's similar amounts of validity to a book or rule in another language

KorvinStarmast

3:25 PM

@CTWind I provided a link to the rule in question, for part of it, since the SRD covers that. But it does not cover the feat.

Q: Confusion over Hunter with Crossbow Expert and Giant Killer

3:38 PM

2

I'm planning on making a Goblin Ranger (Hunter subclass). I was reading over the Giant Killer ability: Giant Killer: When a Large or larger creature within 5 feet of you hits or misses you with an attack, you can use your Reaction to attack that creature immediately after its attack, provid...

dnd-5e feats

3:54 PM

why is that ^
hnq?

high velocity on an answer, probably

it will probably drop off HNQ again pretty soon

user15026

4:14 PM

@BESW I still wish I had an answer to this for you.

@BESW Related: alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/…

4:46 PM

People should probably keep an eye on this question: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/143543/…

It has 4 reopen votes but I really don't think it is ready to be opened yet.

There are a bunch of questions in the comments that IMO need answers and fixing before the question is good to go.

I fear if it is opened in this condition the answers are going to be really poor and unfocused.

I upvoted it because I think it's a good question to ask, even if it wasn't quite ready

but yeah, not reopen yet

is "doing this sort of tedious bookkeeping really super fast is the exact problem that computers were invented for" count as an answer?

Eh well... I don't think it's exactly that

@Carcer it could be part of an answer backed by specific game experience showing that your specific computer implementation solved a similar problem at your table ;)

But...it's unclear what specific issue or issues OP wants to solve or is experiencing

The querent has what is for many playstyles a perfectly reasonable desire to allow the players to track large amounts of items. It's unwieldy for a bunch of reasons, but of course there are techniques to mitigate the unwieldiness.

"Don't do that" gets rid of the overload, but is not the only way.

4:52 PM

my reading is that what they actually want is a way of validating inventories that isn't very time-consuming so they can do it often and with low effort

to which it seems the obvious very simple answer is "just use spreadsheets for your inventory because you can make it add all that stuff up in nanoseconds"

this is probably something that's baked into dndbeyond

@Carcer Excel and/or LibreOffice calc is your friend.

yeah, exactly

is how I tracked my/group's inventory in my last PF game

Yeah we use spreadsheets as well

well, I think I used a google sheet actually because the party inventory was what was on the boat and everyone could look at it

Though we also don't do encumberance

4:57 PM

sort of feels like the problem is the words "meshes better with gameplay" should really have been "doesn't detract so much time from gameplay"

VtC

@Rubiksmoose I've only used encumbrance once, when the party was specifically looting very large and heavy things. Otherwise, just don't try to put a wagon in your backpack and there won't be a problem.

"This question is already closed" on voting to close it. Nice work.

should slap a link to the alignment meta on that

@Carcer yeah that is really a confusing way to put it and I'm really not sure what it was supposed to mean. You interpretation is certainly potentially valid.

Q: Can a chaotic neutral steal and possibly kill without provocation?

4:59 PM

0

So I am a beginner to dnd and I chose to be chaotic neutral for the freedom of basically doing whatever I want and I was wondering if I was starting to be "that guy?"

dnd-5e dungeons-and-dragons alignment

I wish we could answer that question

Like

Hi, and welcome to RPG Stack Exchange. Please check out our questions to avoid asking and note that we don't handle questions about the behaviour of certain alignments. Protip though: if you think you might be having a bad effect on the game or making your fellow players uncomfortable, ask them, talk with them, and work through their concerns with them. — doppelgreener ♦ 57 secs ago

NO, it is not ok to do whatever just because you chose a particular fictional label. But it's good that you asked because this is a common mistake

but we all know that the answer to the question is unambiguously no, right

@doppelgreener Thanks, it's far better than what I could've come with

Yuuki

@kviiri I mean, there's a difference between "can", "would", "should", and "will".

5:03 PM

@Carcer They can do whatever they want. But they shouldn't and their reasons for choosing the alignment are...suspect from a group dynamic standpoint.

From a purely alignment perspective It really depends on if you see alignment: is it prescriptive or descriptive.

ah you fiddly git

Yuuki

Can you do that? You don't have to be chaotic neutral to be able to do that. Would you do that? Not necessarily. Should you do that? Probably not. Will you do that? Up to you, to be honest.

yes okay, they can do whatever

"Can" as a word has multiple meanings and the body of the question makes it quite clear which one the querent means

Apparently northern Canada was warmer than Florida yesterday. Weird.

5:05 PM

but killing people without provocation/reason is textbook evil and it would be unreasonable to describe such a character as neutral in any sane interpretation of the alignment system

I am always ready to argue about alignments why am I like this

Yuuki

Even if we're talking about prescriptive alignment (alignment determines your actions), chaotic neutral doesn't mean you would kill and steal all the time, it'd be at your own discretion.

Well, there is the school of thought that Chaotic Neutral is more or less "just so randoooom"

I wish alignments were not so popular among non-players (and hence beginning ones)

@kviiri I think it's just an easy way for them to define "personality" when experienced with exploring deeper RP. I don't mind it as a descriptor as long as it isn't too limiting on player choice.

@DavidCoffron The problem is, it comes with a lot of baggage.

With the common one being that you can just play a chaotic character and do whatever you please and others can't get mad at you for it...

5:21 PM

Alignments being adopted after-the-fact as a personality mechanic was a huge mistake.

Alternatively, that it's something the party should obsessively track. Eg. the GM telling that "your character wouldn't do that because they're <alignment>" which makes especially little sense in 5e where alignment doesn't really do a thing, except in some very rare circumstances

There's much better personality mechanics available too.

what do people think of the edits I made to that question so far?

"The other PCs are either CN or CL"

chaotic... lewd?

Chaotic Loud

5:23 PM

Chaotic Lawful sounds like a great name for a band

@kviiri This matches my experience.

I think we might have an answerable question now right?

Where we can actually tell them to stop paying attention to aligment and to pay attention to what the group finds fun and talk about MGS

I first heard of the DnD alignment system in NetHack, where Chaotics generally do have a "do what you want" license. They do have their drawbacks, but they're mainly not-very-obvious, especially to a player who didn't get very far

eg. the other two alignments have a better choice of matching artifacts, like the ever-useful Excalibur or Mjöllnir.

Q: What happens if I try to grapple mirror image?

11

Grapple is an attack, a special melee attack: When you want to grab a creature or wrestle with it, you can use the Attack action to make a special melee attack, a grapple. If you're able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them. Because it's an attac...

dnd-5e grapple illusion

Just signed the contract for our new home \o/

@Rubiksmoose Aye

5:35 PM

@kviiri congraats

@kviiri nice!!!

@DavidCoffron Thanks!

Hooray! Congratulations!

5:47 PM

I'd invite y'all over for housewarming if it wasn't a logistical issue

It's the thought that counts!

@kviiri Logistics schmalistics. I can cast teleport and bring 8 of us (although I'm not familiar, so the Mishaps might be a problem)

Q: UX research time! March 2019 and the user profile and settings

@Rubiksmoose At least when doing mental arithmetic

nitsua60

65

🙋🏻‍♀️Hello! My name is Donna and I’m a UX (User Experience) designer here at Stack Overflow. Recently, Jon Ericson suggested that we share UX research updates so that the folks here can get more visibility into one of the inputs we use to make product decisions. Inspired by Dr. Julia’s bite-siz...

discussion featured profile-page user-experience research

@Miniman Haven't seen you around much recently--how's life?

Q: How do I fix the group tension caused by my character stealing and possibly killing without provocation?

8:26 PM

5

So I am a beginner to D&D and I chose to be chaotic neutral for the freedom of basically doing whatever I want and I was wondering if I was starting to be "that guy?" By that, I was hoping you know that people could tell me what counts as "that guy." One example of a problematic incident was w...

dnd-5e group-dynamics alignment

8:39 PM

@kviiri oh grats on that

KorvinStarmast

9:01 PM

@doppelgreener Arneson originally came up with alignments before the game was published, due to how some of his players were being backstabbers and such. See my answer to HeyICanChan's question about early D&D , pre D&D PvP.

@doppelgreener Yes indeed. Other ways of dealing with such things do exist.

@kviiri I will find a way to send you a housewarming present. But I may need to do some pondering first.

user15026

@kviiri That's exciting! :)

@kviiri how's your hand? Did you have to sign a couple dozen pages?